To celebrate the recent release of the remake of Resident Evil 3 on consoles and PC, we had the absolute privilege of chatting with industry veteran Neil Newbon who portrayed both Nicholai Ginovaef and Nemesis in this reimagining of the classic Survival Horror game. We talked about the amazing response of the RE community, his acting roots and his experiences on set.
STARBURST: Congratulations on the game. We loved it – you and the rest of the team did an amazing job of capturing the spirit of the original.
NEIL NEWBON: Thank you so much that means so much to me and the rest of the cast.
How has the response been from the very vocal and passionate Resident Evil community?
It’s been great. It’s been nice to get loads of really positive feedback through social media and interviews and so many people have been giving us praise. I tend as an actor not to read too much press about my performances– and whilst I don’t respond to individuals, I do read everything that people send me on social media. My experience is in the Volume. The audience’s experience is, obviously, the judgement of my character – as long as they have a reaction my work is done!
I’m happy that people enjoyed the experience and, most likely, hated my character [laughs] and that’s really nice – so from that point of view that’s enough [laughs]. People certainly like to hate Nicholai! It’s great to see how invested people get in Resident Evil as well – I’m a tiny cog in a massive machine and I’ve been very lucky to be able to play in the Universe, I feel very blessed as an actor to play not just one but two pivotal roles in the franchise – Nemesis being a real dream to be offered that. The community is also extremely sweet, and they’ve been so loving and welcoming – a big thank you to everyone who has sent their heart-warming feedback to me and my castmates.
Before we get onto the RE3 Remake, let’s talk a little about your history as an actor and motion capture artist. Where did your passion and love of acting begin?
I was lucky when I was a kid – I was into theatre, dance and music from a very early age. I was also a geek – massively into Role-Playing Games and computer games when it wasn’t “fashionable” to play them back in the 80s and 90s and a love for telling stories – I was a big reader and I was supported by lots of my teachers along with my mum who’s a big fan of theatre and drama. She used to take me to Stratford to see Shakespeare as I am from the Midlands and she’d also encouraged me to become a part of National Youth Theatre. This was pivotal, it was the most important moment of deciding that I wanted to become an Actor as well as her encouragement, I also had an amazing English teacher called Bob Melhuish who is still a close friend of mine as well as another teacher of mine Lisa Fair – they really lit a fire under me and cultivate a love of drama. National Youth Theatre, which was headed by the sadly now passed Ed Wilson, who was the most magnificently charismatic human being. The NYT is such an amazing resource, it’s a non-profit charity that puts on professional-grade theatre every year using kids from the age of 15 or 16 to do the courses and the following year you were invited back to be in the plays. The plays are critiqued by journalists who grade them against professional-level productions. The NYT has started many actors’ careers and it’s a wonderful resource. My love affair with acting started there for sure. I also trained for many years with Giles Forman at his school in Soho – I urge any young actors to seek the school out for their amazing courses. I was incredibly lucky to get into theatre early on and then into film and television thereafter. I’ve managed to work for every year of my career and about 10 years ago I got into performance capture at a time when few performers wanted to do it.
When I joined, I was a gamer and I was doing a lot of film indie projects but struggling financially until I saw an article in PC Gamer about performance capture. It instantly looked just like theatre and film combined to me. The first gig I did was Ghost Recon: Future Soldier – which was a massive shoot working alongside ex-US special forces. I was blessed to get involved exceedingly early and was helped immensely by industry professionals. It was a breath of fresh air as I was able to use every skill from acting to martial arts training to sword combat in one package.
In games, I have found a wonderful niche I specialise in multi-role character work, mocap, performance capture, stunts and combat and creature work as well as voice over. Often doing many lead, supporting or incidental roles in one game.
We were performing own stunts (as we were all trained in martial arts or gymnastics etc and we knew how to compose and perform them safely and professionally) and would regularly perform as an ensemble a huge variety of creatures and characters.
At that time there was about a dozen of us in the whole of the UK that was regularly doing motion capture as performers many years and we cut our teeth on the work finding solutions and performing multiple characters in a single shoot session, we were further honing our craft in this relatively new medium and it was a joy to play. It was like a working family – Audiomotion studios for me personally helped me start my career in this way, I was lucky enough to quickly start working with Andy Serkis’ Imaginarium and Centroid3d as well as other studios. All of us involved saw that this was the future of performance and storytelling. Tv, Film and theatre will always exist and now games were finally being seen as art and the new way to have immersive active storytelling in ways thus far not experienced. Whilst some were telling me it would damage my career I and others like me saw the potential and we were all grateful to be working in it.
Interestingly, it didn’t matter your background which was really wonderful. Diversity in life and entertainment is a very important issue and it’s great that we are all championing it now and normalising the involvement and representation of all genders and all ethnic backgrounds. In mocap at that time, anyone could play anyone which was very cool as it meant, the work was based solely on your movement skill and performance and not what an actor would look like. There weren’t as many female roles as there are now ( a fantastic shift in the Games Industry and one I wholeheartedly support) and thus the main issue was at the time was that there were not many female actors working in mocap and indeed very few actors in general even knew about mocap. The games industry, performance capture and voice over is an amazingly collaborative and creative experience and one that I feel very proud to be a part of. Cast and crew work close and with each other and there isn’t really the same division you get on a tv or film set at times.
As well as perform I now consult, direct and teach – my companies Performance Captured Ltd and Performance Captured Academy are both born from my love and passion for the work (www.performancecapturedacademy.com)
You were also in Detroit: Become Human, can you talk a little about your experience on that game and working with David Cage?
I knew about David and was a fan of his early work: starting with Fahrenheit / Indigo Prophecy as it is called in America. I was lucky that I reached out at the right time for DBH and I got to speak to the wonderful Frédérique Barkoff, the casting director that was working with David. She was helping David cast the whole of Detroit which was approximately 120 roles. I sent in a self-tape and I got asked to read for Gavin Reed who is kind of an asshole detective – the reception from that community has been amazing by the way [laughs]. So I was asked to come in to play Gavin and then David asked me to also read for Kamski as well. The writing is so strong and that really helped me. Adam Williams, the lead writer and Benjamin and David are all amazing creative people – Quantic Dream are an incredible team full of 100‘s of talented individuals. I also got to work with Bryan Dechart a lot – he’s a real gentleman and a lovely person and talented actor. David was very kind to me and allowed me to play and add a lot of organic additions to the characters.
Back onto Resident Evil 3 Remake, you play the sinister Nicholai as well as the performance capture for Nemesis. How was it finding the balance between playing both of them?
I’m very humbled that I’m often given the trust to be a multi-role actor in a lot of the projects that I do and that the directors allow me to experiment and play very different characters. As they are such different animals it was easy to flip between the minds sets of them as I had spent a lot of time working by myself and then with the Capcom team and the incredible Actor’s director that is Steve Kneibhily. I found the whole experience energising and we didn’t have a single ‘bad’ day on set only physically challenging ones.
One of our favourite things about Nicholai is that he fits in perfectly as a villain of the piece (alongside obviously the massive monstrous Nemesis) – he has a purpose, doesn’t feel too cartoonish but the right level to fit in with the Resident Evil ethos and that is down really to your wonderful performance. How did you approach this, and did you do research into how he was represented in the original game all those years ago?
I like to think I never play Villains per se – I get cast as characters that do amoral or immoral things or things that people find upsetting but I never see my characters as bad people – I always see them as fully three-dimensional characters with wants, needs and objectives (as all actors do with their characters). So I try never to judge them – I try to love them for who they are and then try to work within the confines of the story for what they can and could do and what they should and might do. So, for me, Nicholai was always very fascinating because he was a born survivor and he’s also highly capable and very motivated and focused.
My take on him was very much my own based on the strong script and world, as I never try to duplicate other people’s performances. I often take from real people that I have met on my own journey in life – inspiration from mannerisms or habits that I’ve found interesting. With Nicholai, I found the casual humour that he takes in his life, even when that is deeply troubling and on the darker side of humanity. The fact that he’s at ease with it was so interesting to me. That he revels and feels free in it. He’s motivated by money, sure, but he’s motivated by experience too. That’s why I think we’re drawn to villainous roles as an audience member too.
One of the lines I delivered as Nicholai to Carlos (“She’ll get you killed”), I wanted to deliver it in a way that was not just a warning or a put down on Jill but was something that he truly didn’t want to happen to Carlos – you know, adding that extra layer of humility and humanity to Nicholai to allow me to see him as a real person and not just an antagonist.
How was it working as part of the Resident Evil family? What was your favourite moment on set when doing the mocap and working directly with them?
Nicole, Jeff and Steve (and others ) are like a born-again family to me – we never had a bad day on set. We still speak to each other all the time and see each other in London, LA and Japan. We keep in close contact; I love them all dearly. It’s not just them either, so many people work so hard when making a game and I urge everyone reading to please watch the credits on games, movies and TV shows to really celebrate and champion everyone that plays an integral part in making these amazing pieces of entertainment.
I had many favourite moments and it’s hard to single one out- I loved working with Capcom (Miguel Corti is also part of our family) and working with Tajiri and the team at the amazing Digital Frontier studios in Tokyo, one of my favourite places to shoot now.
What is your favourite line of dialogue for Nicholai?
“Where is your sense of self-preservation?” sticks out – when I read it in the script it unlocked the character for me, it’s not just money that means so much to him but he also fundamentally believes that everyone should be strong enough to look after themselves and self-preservation is one of the key virtues to every human being I think because of our nature and evolution. I liked that line a lot because I found it engaging and a fun moment. Also, it’s in the first scene you see him in and it’s just as he shoots Murphy (Todd Haberkorn) in the head – Todd and I are now friends by the way. Both Jeff and Todd did this role (Jeff mocap, Todd’s voice) thus showing that a character in this work can be made up of a truly collaborative experience
It has been revealed that Nicholai is the next Mastermind in the 4v1 online game RESIDENT EVIL RESISTANCE – how much fun was it to return to the role in this side project?
A lot of the work for RE3 we did was shot and recorded at the studio of the main game. About a month or two after we finished the main game in Japan, Capcom came back and asked me to do the multiplayer section which I didn’t even know about beforehand. It was really fun and we were able to go a bit nuts with the character and we improvised quite heavily around the fun script as this side game is much less serious in tone to the main game [laughs]. Jamie the voice director in LA was a hoot to work with.
If given the opportunity to portray Nicholai in the new set of live-action adaptations of Resident Evil that are currently in development, would you love to return to the role?
Obviously! [laughs]. In fact, Johannes Roberts, if you are reading this please give me a call! [laughs]. I’d love to play Nicholai again in any iteration or medium- he was a blast!
RESIDENT EVIL 3 is out now on PC, PS4 and Xbox One.
